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Victoria MP settles into new roles Rankin to sit on finance committee, serve as national revenue critic for NDP
Avid recycler Diane Lade lays a piece of plastic wrap to dry after washing it in the kitchen of her home in Fernwood. Lade separates her recycling in baskets that she leaves in her kitchen cupboards.
Daniel Palmer News staff
Victoria’s newly elected MP is already in the thick of Ottawa politics. Murray Rankin has been appointed to the standing committee on finance, a non-partisan government panel that provides advice on the annual budget and conducts financial investigations. The NDP MP is also assuming the role of national revenue critic and said he’s already got a number of issues he wants to tackle through the finance committee. Murray Rankin “One of the things that CRA has been accused of is targeting environmental organizations in particular, arguing that they have not kept to their charitable status because they spend more than 10 per cent of their activity on advocacy and politics,” Rankin said. Tides Canada and the Suzuki Foundation are two organizations that have been subject to intense CRA scrutiny, he added. “If there is evidence of the CRA acting in a political way against groups that are opposed to government policy, it raises flags that we need to investigate.” Offshore tax havens and the closure of several CRA offices across Canada are also of concern, Rankin said. Rankin’s constituency office is set to open in the next few weeks in the Mosaic Building, 1057 Fort St., across the street from the office of VictoriaBeacon Hill MLA Carole James. dpalmer@vicnews.com
Sharon Tiffin/News staff
Recycling takes a new turn Organics composting up and running in city Daniel Palmer News staff
Diane Lade opens the lower cupboards in her kitchen one-by-one, revealing a meticulous sorting station for plastics, cardboard, bottles and composting. Although she’s been minimizing her landfill-destined garbage for more than 20 years, Lade applauds the City of Victoria for its new kitchen scraps program. “I really think about how everything that comes out of our household goes somewhere,” said the Fernwood co-op resident. “The chemicals go down the drain ... there’s so much plastic out there
in the ocean. We’re just happy the city has created the program and we can put more stuff into the compost now.” The program, which officially started Monday with dual waste pickups by city sanitation crews, is projected to divert about 1,500 tonnes of waste from the Hartland landfill each year. And it goes beyond the raw vegetables, fruit and eggshells used in backyard composting. Raw and cooked meat, fish, bones, bread, pizza – even soiled paper products such as napkins and paper towels – will be accepted in the new green bins now in place at more than 14,000 Victoria homes. Ed Robertson, assistant director of public works, expects a few hiccups in the early weeks of the program, as crews
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familiarize themselves with new trucks, routes and schedules. “You can plan this for years, but until you actually flip the switch, you don’t know what’s going to happen,” he said. The city will also need to figure out how it’s going to separate food scraps from the hundreds of public street bins before the Capital Regional District begins penalizing haulers for such waste in January 2014. “That’s a phase we haven’t talked about yet,” Robertson said. The majority of businesses and apartment dwellers that rely on private haulers will need to comply with CRD guidelines as well. PLEASE SEE: Private pickups, Page A6
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